Curriculum Development in Hospitality and Tourism Higher Education: challenges and gaps

The positive growth of the travel and tourism industry in the 20th century is set to continue in the 21st century. This phenomenon creates a number of challenges for travel and tourism educators who have to respond accordingly. However, it appears hospitality and tourism education society has evolved in a heterogeneous and ad hoc manner and does not necessarily meet the needs of the travel and tourism industry. This is because there are many challenges and gaps involved in the curriculum development process. And, we should recall that this development process is intended to enhance the graduates’ knowledge and skills, and employability in the sector. The current issue is to understand all partners in the knowledge exchange and transfer process – students, teachers, institutions and the hospitality industry – with the aim to enhance teaching and learning outcomes through quality curricula. Subsequently, through systematic literature review and multi stages of analysis in the research tradition, the article shows four critical thematic obstacles for educator of tourism and hospitality higher education in dealing with curriculum development such as (1) the need of information and communication technologies (ICT), (2) human resources issues on graduate’s competency, job, and career aspiration, (3) curriculum content towards knowledge and skill formulation that aligned with the industry and business expectation,